In a canny PR move, the team behind the Surface Pro has hosted a discussion on the internet forum Reddit to answer questions about Microsoft's latest fondleslab.
These kinds of online forum discussions are risky, since they can't be tightly controlled. President Obama's attempt came across as slick, while others have been …

Re: Other operating systems

> I wonder if this is speculative, or if it means Microsoft have actually already tested its suitability as a hackintosh.

It was engineers talking, wasn't it? I don't it MS's corporate policy to promote the probably illegitimate use of a rival's OS on their machine. Still, it might have provided them with some task-for-task energy consumption benchmarks against OSX on the MS same hardware.

>This enabled them to bring the response time of touch controls down from 100ms to below 12ms

12ms is around what iDevices have had since the first iPhone, and what Android has only achieved with its recent Jelly Bean version. It makes a noticeable difference in music-creation applications. It's good to see that MS have been paying attention.

Can you cite a source?

Re: Can you cite a source? (@Mic)

I think the poster may be confusing refresh times and touch response times — the iPhone display has run with hardware acceleration and a 60Hz response rate since day one whereas the Android OS didn't mandate a GPU at first and versions prior to 3.0 did all drawing and updating, including scrolling, on the CPU.

There's definitely some response lag on iOS devices; I couldn't tell you exactly what it is but it's easy enough to discern if you try dragging or scrolling. Just watch exactly what you put your finger down on, then move it quickly and watch whatever is trying to track your finger always be a few milliseconds behind. It subjectively feels like a lot less than 100ms but is definitely more than a frame, and clearly more than the 1ms Microsoft has demonstrated in the lab. I guess 12ms likely buys you a single frame of lag, which it definitely feels like iOS is doing worse than.

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

In all fairness - it took me a while to figure out what Eadon meant: it seems as if he intended to write "Microsoft('s) copy (of) Apple (led to a) fail (for Microsoft)".

<---- Paris, because, well, defending Eadon makes me feel dirty and a little confused (this despite my being firlmy in the penquin camp). I may as well defend RICHTO or BDG555 (now fortunately no longer with us, although I still believe they are one and the same).

But I won't evangelise nor slag people off for their choices - my choice is personal and probably idealistic, but there you are.

Go after the high end -> Go after the high end - MS have always covered all markets - different offerings for XBox, Windows editions (before 8). And why, pray, is this a problem? FAIL

Apple retail stores -> Microsoft Retail Stores

etc. - Another one I'll give you - can't really see the point.

Microsoft also copy Google, Sony and a plethora of others too, the copying is irrefutable. - And they do likewise. GMail copies hotmail, for example. Android copies iOS in many ways (and vice versa). That's the cost of competing. FAIL

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

All hope is now gone, after reading (and replying) to something you wrote the other day that came across as quite reasonable, you have devolved back to your normal rants, shame as some of your first post made sense.

Mac UI -> Windows UI << Really I thought the Mac UI was popular??

ARM -> ARM <<Doesnt this run on an I5

Make hardware -> make hardware <<Samsung make hardware too

iPod -> Zune << The iPod was not the first MP3 player on the market

iPad -> Surface <<They didnt copy this a quick look will tell you that they look completely different

App Store -> Microsoft Store <<App Store not the only one on the market to be copied

iPhone -> Win Pho 7/8 <<Unbelievable as this seems iPhone only made smart phones popular they were not the first Smart phone on the market

Go after the high end -> Go after the high end << 90% of the worlds companies do this, including MS that is why you have so many different releases of Windows from starter to Premium, aiming at differing levels of the market

You need to find your pause button, some of your comments start off with semi intelligent comments which rapidly turn into anti MS rants, I know im going to be accused of being some kind of MS corporate shill because of this and if they want to pay me to point out the blindingly obvious then I wont stop them lol

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

I think most of you apple fanboys have become tinted by apple... Whilst all of you are arguing about who is copying who may I remind you that Apple is the biggest copy cat of all... and has been sued many times as a result, Apple even have the design of a rectangle with rounded corners patent, Only naive people would have that done.

Also MP3 > iPod???

So please you apple fan boys get off your high horse because apple is nothing more then another company out there that borrows idea's and technology off other people/companys. If you people believe no one should borrow idea's of other people then how is technology ever going to advance???

And another question for you, When microsoft releases the surface pro, how long until Apple release a Tablet that you can run Mac OSX on?

But surely that would mean Apple is copying Microsoft even though its there operating system....

I try not to be gratuitously rude, but you really do spout some crap on here. And given your propensity for calling everyone who disagrees with you a shill, I think it's justified. That's also bollocks by the way - no one cares enough about your opinion to be worth spending actual money to dispute it. Yes astro-turfing and shilling does happen, but it seems to be quite rare on here. Much more likely to appear on online reviews, and it's harder to spot there because the comments are shorter, and you often can't check posting histories.

As for your MS copying Apple comments. Well, sometimes they do. Sometimes Apple copy them, sometimes they both copy Google. That's business for you. You might argue WinRT is a copy of Apple (unfairly in my opinion), but Surface Pro certainly isn't. MS have consistently been trying to put full-fat Windows on a tablet since the 1990s, even when the technology barely existed to do it. They've probably spent billions on it. In tablets they are maybe the biggest innovators in the industry - even though they keep cocking it up when it comes to releasing products...

They've almost got full tablets right, although there's an argument that the chips still aren't quite there to do it properly even now. ARM aren't quite powerful enough, and Intel still a bit too power-hungry. Plus Win 8 doesn't look to be perfect for tablets quite yet, but one service pack might solve most of those problems - I think they could make it fit for desktops with minimal changes.

I do agree with you that it's quite sad seeing MS trying to copy the Apple cool factor with stores though. And they also copied Apple with Zune and did it better. The Zune software was much worse than iTunes, which must have taken some serious effort to achieve...

Re: MS Surface pro FAIL

Eadon - In all seriousness, I am genuinely concerned for you. I really do worry about your mental health.

Its simply not healthy or normal to spend what must be a major part of your day posting vitriolic comments on the Register ranting about Microsoft. Microsoft are just a company. Apple are just a company. They both exist to sell stuff. They both just make stuff - no one has died. To spend most of your waking time ranting about widget A being better than gadget B simply isn't normal. Theres wars, famine, death, opression and lots of of heinous things in this world to get this worked up about - but a new computer???

Maybe go out for a walk? Spend some time in the park, find some hobbies or intersts outside IT. Broaden your horizons. You really do come across as someone in dire need of an intervention. Again, this is not a dig or an insult, I just really worry that you'll become the focus of an el reg news article after having done a Mark Chapman, putting six bullets into Blamers back straight after asking him to sign a Microsoft surface.

Re: Re

But apple are allowed to be 'inspired' by other products (I had a phone that I could load MP3's onto long before the iPod/iPhone, Siemens SL45 anyone?) but anyone looking at an iProduct and thinking 'thats a nice feature' will have the iAttackLawyers set on them. iNnovation ? Nein Danke.